At the same time as I was reading the novel, I was consulting with peers and experts about how to get my art in front of a larger audience on the internet. Specifically, I had sessions with two arts business coaches who gave me essentially opposite advice about how to get my work seen.

One day, after lamenting to a fellow artist about the difficulty of knowing which strategies would work, I was struck by the sudden realization that we, modern creators, are doing the exact same thing as the ancient Greeks. We are exchanging folk wisdom about how to placate the gods – or in this case, the social media algorithms. None of us really knows what works, the algorithm gods are capricious, and we tend to blame ourselves for bad outcomes (I guess I didn’t do the ritual right).

So The Algorithm series was born. I took some old watercolors (and made some new ones after I ran out), imagined myself as the voice of The Algorithm, and handed down some not-terribly-comforting words of “wisdom,” which I printed on top of the paintings in a highly authoritative font using a pigment-based inkjet printer. Each one is unique. I really hope The Algorithm likes them : )